1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cordless telephone-to-sound card interface adapter with a hybrid transformer, which provides mobility to an end user during voice communications over the Internet.
2. Description of the Related Art
Historically, a determining factor in the low usage of Internet telephony usage was attributed to poor voice quality. Nevertheless, in the last few years major progress has been made in this area to address the voice quality issues. These improvements have motivated Internet users, especially people or companies with limited budgets for international long-distance calls, to take advantage of the service. The service advantageously provides savings of up to 70% over the traditional calling system, in addition to the relatively low rates offered by Internet providers and traditional local-call telephony.
The present application concerns an interface adapter which connects between a cordless telephone system and a computer for facilitating voice communications over the Internet using Voice over IP (VoIP) communications. There are at least two such interface adapter devices on the U.S. market—namely, the Phonebridge device and the ChatBridge device. The ChatBridge device utilizes a Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface, a digital signal processor (DSP), and sophisticated software to emulate an application on the computer for canceling echo so that a sound card is not needed for voice communication. With the Phonebridge device, the computer must be equipped with a sound card to establish voice communication but sophisticated electronics are also required for its operation.
A computer may often use external speakers and microphone which interface with the sound card. Without any special mechanism in the interface adapter, however, the end user would undesirably have to disconnect and reconnect the external computer speakers and microphone from the sound card each time an Internet call is made using the interface adapter and cordless telephone.
Thus, what is needed is a low-cost but effective interface adapter which connects between a cordless telephone and a computer for facilitating voice communications over the Internet using VoIP communications that is convenient to use.